Be yourself… and fail at everything else

Perhaps the greatest act of courage is to be oneself when everything conspires to the contrary. The characters who parade through the streets knew this—without needing to say it. Eccentrics (Acantilado), the disturbing and endearing human catalogue composed by Geminello Alvi with a clinical eye and heretical tenderness. It's not a history book. It's an archive of deviant souls. A litany for those who are out of tune. A monument to marginality as a form of lucidity.

These pages feature no official heroes or textbook martyrs. Alvi brings together a constellation of sublime erratics : the Apache chief— Geronimo —who survives as a fairground attraction; the German general— Von Zeppelin —who sought to wrap clouds in cloth; the French aristocrat— the Count of Saint Germain —who sought to turn alchemy into the path to immortality. Each biography celebrates anomaly with the same casualness with which others enshrine obedience.

Among the most unusual profiles is Florence Foster Jenkins, the voiceless soprano, empress of the off-key, an involuntary icon of artistic honesty. She filled theaters singing with more faith than hearing. She was not a victim of ridicule, but its sovereign. She sang convinced of her gift, immune to mockery, protected by an unshakeable self-esteem . While the audience laughed, she consecrated herself. She ended up receiving a standing ovation . Not for how she sang, but for having sung despite everything.

The Fox sisters unwittingly founded the Age of Spirits . They communicated with the dead by rapping on tables. They faked the miracle and created a religion. Later, they confessed to the deception , but they had already set in motion an unstoppable collective delirium . Spiritualism no longer belonged to them. They had been the channel. The deception proved more fruitful than many true revelations. The world believed them, and in that act of faith, their place in history was sealed.

Gene Tunney represents an opposite case. His eccentricity lay not in excess, but in discipline. World heavyweight champion, refined boxer, reader of Shakespeare and Marcus Aurelius , Tunney turned the ring into a temple of self-control. He never lost his temper or his composure in the ring. His violence was a symphony. His uniqueness consisted in not seeming like a fighter, in practicing a noble art with the spirit of a scholar. He lived as he thought and struck as he wrote.

The extravagance of Frederick Rolfe, better known as Baron Corvo , takes on a different tone. His delirium was clerical, vengeful, visionary. He believed himself the victim of Vatican plots. He dreamed of becoming pope . He wrote letters in Latin begging for alms and wrote novels as revenge.

In the fictional fantasy of Hadrian VII He invented a fictitious pontificate to settle accounts with the world . His resentment took literary form. His personal ruin did not tarnish the brilliance of his work. He lived in hatred, but wrote with the precision of a surgeon. His style was his revenge.

What in others would have been imposture, in them was essence. They didn't act. They were

All these portraits share one quality: an intransigence toward convention. None of these characters sought to provoke. Nor did they seek attention or rupture. Their difference was structural, constitutive, and inalienable. What in others would have been imposture, in them was essence . They didn't act. They were.

Alvi's gaze is neither condescending nor ironic . Nor is it hagiographic. It is the gaze of a moral entomologist. He describes without judgment. He extracts beauty from imbalance. He vindicates the usefulness of the useless, the clarity of delirium, the precision of the absurd. His prose is sharp and restrained. He portrays without drama. He finds meaning where others would see pathology or ridiculousness .

Some of the book's most singular figures are women. Not because of a quota or a trend, but because of narrative justice. Women like Princess Caraboo, a polyglot imposter and leech peddler, defied the passivity reserved for them. They spoke up. They invented themselves. Their eccentricity was a form of power. In a society that assigned them silence, they chose noise .

'Eccentrics' acts as an inverted mirror. It shows what we don't want to see. It rejects normalcy as a value. It celebrates the margin.

Eccentrics acts as an inverted mirror. It shows what we don't want to see. It rejects normalcy as a value. It celebrates the margin. It rehabilitates difference . In an age of algorithms, of repeated aesthetics, of certified identities, weirdness becomes uncomfortable . Alvi turns it into a virtue.

This isn't a book about monsters . It's a book about possibilities . The possibility of living without asking permission. Of failing with style. Of not adapting out of conviction. In a world that demands fitting in, the protagonists of Eccentrics decided not to. They didn't hide. They didn't disguise themselves. They were true to their way of being in the world, even when the world didn't make room for them.

Eccentrics isn't a tribute. It's a warning. Weirdness isn't dead. It's merely relegated to the realm of the harmless, the aesthetic, the marketable. But the true eccentrics are still alive , lurking on the margins, oblivious to the spectacle . They don't seek attention. They seek meaning.

Geminello Alvi has rescued them with the precision of a watchmaker. And with the compassion of a heretic. “Eccentrics are not monsters. They are the opposite: a warning and the image of freedom ,” the narrator warns us.